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Friday, 1 March 2013

Making a Small Indoor/Outdoor Worm Farm (the easiest way)

How would you like some pets that will eat your waste and feed your plants, don't require walking or a babysitter when your away, are extremely quiet and will only ever deposit excrement in the right place. Sounds good...? then look no further then the humble earthworm. Unfortunately they are not so great to cuddle up with.

Worm husbandry is a simple way of turning kitchen and garden waste into a great potting soil or soil amendment known as vermicompost for use in the garden or on your house
plants.

To name but a few benefits of vermicompost.....

Microbial activity in vermicompost is 10 to 20 times higher than in the soil and organic matter that the worm ingests. This microbial activity ultimately provides mineral nutrients to plants.

Improves water holding capacity of the soil

Enhances seed germination, plant growth, and crop yield

Improves root growth and structure

It will also provide you with a regular supply of worms to feed
to chickens or to populate your garden and if like to fish you
will never be short of bait.

What you need

Container of wood or plastic. You can use a sturdy
plastic container that is about 15 cm deep, 30 cm wide and 45 cm long.
These measurements are not critical but you want something with a large
surface area that is quite shallow as the worms used for vermicomposting are natural surface feeders (see below).

Worms. The worms we use for vermicomposting are a European native called Eisenia fetida. In natural conditions these worms live in the top soil and duff layer on the soil surface. These small, deeply pigmented worms have a poor burrowing ability, preferring instead an environment of loose organic litter or loose topsoil rich in organic matter. They feed on the organic surface debris.

Bedding material. Start with some shredded
newspaper, moistened, not soaking wet. Add a
couple of handfuls of damp garden soil, and a couple of
crushed egg shells (calcium is essential for the worms to reproduce), vegetable and fruit scraps and any herbaceous plant material, fresh or old, cut into small pieces.

What to do

Place the damp shredded newspaper with the damp garden soil ,
crushed
egg shells and veggie scraps in the container, mix it up and make sure its all moist, like a wrung out sponge.

Put the worms in. The worms will eventually eat all of
this material and by passing it through their gut they transform it into
a very high value plant food.... voila, vermicompost.

Worms do not like light so cover
the top of the box with a dark cloth.

If you have your worms inside your
house/apartment it is worth having a mesh cover or a lid (with air
holes) to keep the insects out.

Make sure that you keep the worm farm
moist and add more food as the material starts to disappear. You can
keep it moist by spraying water over it. Do not add to much food as
this can lead to odour problems.

What to feed them

Vegetable scraps and starchy scraps, like bread, oatmeal, and pasta.

Soaked paper and cardboard.

Leaf litter and chopped up herbaceous plant material (don't use plants from the Allium familly)

If you really want to treat them, apparently they love bananas.

By blending your kitchen scraps together the worms will process it much quicker.

Do not feed them acidic foods, like citric fruits and they don't like onions or garlic.

If you want to keep the rats away then do not feed your worms meat, poultry, dairy products, or salty food, like potato chips.

As remarkable as the worms are at
processing your scraps do not expect to notice anything special
happening in your worm farm immediately but rest assured the magic is
going on. Just make sure the material in the worm farm is always moist and keep the food coming at
an appropriate rate.

How to harvest

One day you will notice the bedding
you put in is no longer identifiable, the consistency of the material will be thick and clay like. Now is the time
to harvest the castings.
To harvest your castings.....

Start feeding on the surface of one half of your container. Do this for about a week. The worms work out where the food is and migrate to the side of the farm with the food .

Once the worms have migrated, take the black clay like castings out from the end of the farm
where you were not feeding them. There may be a few worms in there but this is not a problem.

If the castings are wet then allow them to dry and then sieve the material to remove any matter that has not yet decomposed.

The castings you have harvested can be mixed with 50% sand to make an excellent potting medium. You can also apply a handful of the mix when planting out your spring vegetables.

Add new food for the worms and mix this up with the remaining half of the container contents.

Worm care

Worms require oxygen so keep the lid partially open to allow air to
circulate.

Turn the bedding with a trowel periodically
to improve air circulation in the farm.

Worms will function best at room temperature. Keep the farm
temperature between 7C-29C.

When keeping worms outside, if the worm farm freezes your worms will die but do not throw the
medium out. The worms will have laid small oval shaped cocoons in the
bedding. The pale yellow ones are newly laid and they turn darker brown when they are ready to hatch. Each cocoon may contain up to 25 baby worms, as the weather warms they will hatch after a few weeks. Look out for tiny white
worms.

Poultry egg shells added to the bedding will provide calcium the
worms need to reproduce.

Worm cocoons

This is a small domestic
version but it can be scaled up to process more waste and breed more
worms. If you are building a bigger worm farm outside it would help to
have drainage in the worm farm to allow water via rainfall to drain without
flooding the worms. The drained liquid from the worm farm is very rich in nutrients and makes an excellent
liquid fertilizer. This liquid can be diluted 10 parts water to 1 part worm farm liquid and applied to your plants.